


Tea and Sympathy

by mogwai_do



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Depression, Friendship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-15
Updated: 2014-10-15
Packaged: 2018-02-21 08:01:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,089
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2460848
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mogwai_do/pseuds/mogwai_do
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Depression is as individual as the person; any remedy likewise.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tea and Sympathy

John had never been the larger than life, dramatic type that Harry was: she had got those genes and all the attention that went with them. It had always irritated him, like a scratchy clothes label, nothing to warrant real complaint, but persistent. She'd always been so self-absorbed; there had been little room for her baby brother in her life and she’d left him precious little room in their parents’ lives too. He'd never known it any other way; it was just how his life worked and it suited him... for the most part.

His few meetings with Harry since his return had been... draining and this had been no exception. Her drinking had always been an issue and somewhere along the way John had lost his aversion to not rocking the boat – if she was going to drink then he was going to call her on it. She blamed his depression on the PTSD, on the choices he'd made with his life. He'd had enough self-control to refrain from commenting on the results of her life choices with the divorce from Clara still fresh, but it had been a close thing. 

Harry had it all wrong though; his choices had never been the problem. In the Army he'd always been too busy with one of the thousand things he'd had to do to let depression ever get a fingerhold; he’d been vital in both senses of the word – needed and so alive.

So many people had had an opinion when he'd chosen to join the Army: Why put himself through that? Didn't he care about his family? Why was he throwing away a good career in medicine for the risk of being shot? Well, he had been shot and he still didn't regret it. Well, he regretted being shot, but not that he had been there for it to happen and he never would. If being shot was the price for those years in the Army, then he counted it a good deal. In the Army he had been divorced from all that had been familiar, family and friends, and he had been John, just John, an independent entity forging his own way. He'd loved every minute of it: the tour in Northern Ireland and his first exposure to the damage IEDs could cause; the peacefully empty wilderness of the Albertan prairies during winter training exercises; and the haunting beauty and devastating violence of Afghanistan.

Sometimes he wondered if Harry was just rewriting her memories to suit her current argument or if she really had never noticed the way he'd struggled through school and his A-levels - not with the work, but with everything else. He'd always tried to find jobs during the holidays, not always successfully, but anything had to be better than hanging around at home and watching their father getting increasingly drunk and more violent, watching their mother withdraw further and further until she was barely even a ghost of herself, and Harry with her attention-seeking behaviour demanding what little attention either of them could spare. John was fine, he was quiet, polite, well-behaved; he had never caused a fuss, so they’d never bothered with him at all.

Anyway, it couldn’t be that bad she’d said or she’d have noticed sooner, he’d have said something or tried to kill himself. John honestly hadn’t known whether to laugh or sob; in the end he’d just left. He hadn’t spoken to her since.

Sherlock's dramatics put Harry's to shame, but equally his black moods made John’s own seem insignificant by comparison. John knew it wasn't any kind of competition, which is maybe where he and Harry had gone wrong so long ago; she'd been competing with the new baby brother before he'd even been capable of speech. John had never felt anything but an aching sympathy for Sherlock during those times and he tried to be quiet, undemanding company. If all he could do was offer tea that remained undrunk and biscuits that were left to go stale, then that was what he would do.

Sherlock could be loud and dramatic and he could sulk for England, but when the black moods struck he was as little like Sherlock as John could imagine. And maybe that was why John's own moods had never been noticed. Maybe if he’d acted out, like Harry, or been as painfully out of character as Sherlock could be, it would have got him the attention, but though he might have wanted it once, he didn’t now. Making a fuss about something like this went against his nature, whether it was genetic or merely ingrained Englishness; he knew wouldn’t feel comfortable with the attention now, he’d got far too used to dealing with his problems on his own. He'd always been quiet, reserved, polite, if sometimes he was quieter and even more invisible, who would notice?

As socially inept as his friend could be, one thing Sherlock could never be accused of was being unobservant.

John looked at the cup of tea by his chair, still steaming, a gingernut biscuit balanced on the rim. The steam would make it soggy before he ate it, but he didn't mind. The flat was quiet; the TV was off and Sherlock was doing... something, John wasn't certain what and hadn't bothered inquiring more closely, but it seemed to involve wandering through the living room at fairly regular intervals. The last circuit had presented him with the cup of tea, unasked for. John hadn't actually wanted one, but as he picked it up and took a sip out of automatic courtesy, the warmth of it eased something in him, like the sun slowly dissolving the mist. 

In the kitchen he could hear Sherlock puttering around, the clink of glassware and the sound of the fridge door. Soft sounds, unobtrusive, comforting. They were the sounds of home, Sherlock included, and John let himself lean back in his chair and closed his eyes. Home, where he was more himself than he'd ever been before; it shouldn’t have taken him so long to find it, but he was glad he finally had. He turned his head to look into the kitchen and the familiar lanky shape curled into the kitchen chair, hunched over the microscope. Without his willing it, John’s lips curved faintly; Sherlock's genius wasn't as single-minded as he would have people believe and if this kind of thing wasn't 'what blokes did' then the definition of best friends was theirs alone and he wouldn't change it for anything.

FIN


End file.
